


Keep the World at Bay

by The_Buzz



Category: Daredevil (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Foggy Nelson Anst, Hurt Matt Murdock, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Matt Murdock Angst, Mentions of Cancer, Missing Scene, POV Foggy Nelson, hand holding, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 01:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Buzz/pseuds/The_Buzz
Summary: Matt is hurting from a fight, and thanks to the chemo, Foggy isn't feeling a whole lot better. They help each other out.





	Keep the World at Bay

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after Daredevil V3 #25 and #26, when Matt fights Ikari and Lady Bullseye and Foggy is in the hospital for his first round of chemo. The story should still be pretty readable if you're not familiar with that particular arc though. All you need to know is that Foggy is under treatment for cancer and Matt has just had his ass handed to him pretty spectacularly. (The exact timeline is a a teensy bit off anyway.)
> 
> Title is borrowed from "Easy Silence" by the Dixie Chicks.
> 
> This is my first attempt at Daredevil fanfic, so please let me know what you think! You can also find me on tumblr as the-buzz-ao3 (main) and avocadosat-law (Matt/Foggy).

Matt sat in the hard plastic chair beside Foggy's bed, running his fingers over the paper Foggy had scrawled on hours earlier. Circles in circles. One of them must have left it on the table beside Foggy's bed before Matt had gone off to fight Ikari again. Sloppy. Anyone could have seen it.

“You're a genius,” Matt said.

Foggy blinked. “Huh?”

Chemo... sucked. Foggy was exhausted all the time, and Matt's arrival back from his big showdown with Ikari (and apparently, Lady Bullseye and the real Bullseye in giant iron lung, because that was just what Matt's life was like) had awoken him from a doze. He still felt groggy. His head pounded and his whole body ached and he wanted to throw up and he couldn’t remember how to concentrate on anything else.

“You're a genius,” Matt said again, smiling at him. It was the kind of smile that had always made something warm and safe and happy unfurl inside him. It still did. A little. The churning nausea that had been his constant companion for the last several hours made it hard to feel much of anything inside.

“Because I figured it out,” Foggy said, the pieces coming together a few seconds too late. Ironic, considering it was his great intellect Matt was attempting to compliment.  “It's easier, sometimes. When you're not the one in the middle of it. Forest for the trees, and all.”

“Maybe so,” Matt said, his fingers still ghosting over the paper. Foggy had always liked Matt’s hands. Strong and callused and sensitive all at the same time. Today his knuckles were swollen and bruised. “Still,” Matt said fondly, “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

There was a beat.

Foggy looked down, and swallowed, the thought _70%_ bubbling up to the forefront of his mind followed, very quickly, by _30._ And that was the best case scenario.

Matt winced. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it's okay,” Foggy said, forcing himself to look up and smile even though Matt couldn’t see it, because he’d hear it in Foggy’s voice. “I bungled the blind thing for the first year or so I knew you. It's only fair you bungle the, the cancer thing, every once in a while.”

Matt's shoulders hunched in tighter and Foggy hated that even now, even when he felt sicker than he had in his entire life, he was still so scared of what his suffering was going to do to Matt.

“Forget it,” Foggy sighed, reaching out to pat Matt’s shoulder. Sitting against the vertical back of the hospital bed, he could barely reach, had to stretch his arm all the way out. It felt as hard as when he'd tried to lift weights in the office with Matt a hundred years ago. But he did it, and let his fingers linger on Matt's broad shoulder, gripping ever so lightly.

Matt caught Foggy’s hand against his shoulder and squeezed it, those strong, capable fingers closing around Foggy’s. It made Foggy want to cry, not that he would.

Then Matt brought their hands--Foggy's still clasped in his--back to rest on Foggy's chest, over his heart. He didn't let go, even though it meant leaning in over the distance between the chair and the bed, one arm braced on his knee.

Foggy could see the red dusting of stubble on Matt's sharp jaw, and where the butterfly bandage on his eyebrow was starting to fray off on one side, and the way Matt's tongue worked at the spot behind a split lip. His own reflection in Matt's glasses staring back at him. And then somehow Foggy's habitual catalog of Matt's injuries was shifting into something else. Matt was so close and all of a sudden Foggy was frozen, unable to let go or look away. 

Matt's tongue darting out to moisten his bottom lip, his thumb moving lightly over the skin on the back of Foggy's hand. Foggy's heart was pounding in anticipation. Matt was breathing shallowly and even without a radar sense of his own, Foggy had a feeling Matt's heart was pounding too.

"Matty,” Foggy murmured, because it wasn't so much that whatever was charging the air between them was wrong as it was impossible and more than he could contemplate when everything hurt and he might die and Matt was the only person in his life who could help see him through it. “Let go.”

Matt jumped back like he'd been burned, whipping his hand back and jerking towards his chair, then Foggy thought maybe he really had been burned because--

“Argh!”

\--Matt was on his knees on the linoleum, doubled over with one arm wrapped around his ribs and the other caught on the fall guard on the edge of the hospital bed. Red starting was dot the white of his shirt sleeve in a vicious line along his forearm, and his face was twisted in an ugly grimace.

“Matty!” Foggy said, helpless even though he was barely two feet away. “What happened?”

“I'm sorry, I,” Matt said, sounding horrified, or like he couldn't catch his breath. “I thought--I mean. I wasn't. Nng.”

Without any more explanation Matt pushed to his feet and stumbled into the bathroom adjoined to Foggy's room, emerging seconds later with a hand towel wrapped tightly around his forearm.

Foggy looked up at him, baffled. Maybe it was the chemo brain, but...for the life of him he wasn't sure what had just happened.

Matt's grip on the towel around his forearm was white-knuckled under the bruising. “...I broke a couple of ribs. I wasn't thinking, and... concussion's got my balance off to begin with, and my ankle’s a little funny. Twisted the wrong way and overbalanced. Sorry.”

That explained how Matt had ended up on the floor, jarring all his injuries like that, but Foggy was still struggling with why Matt had jumped. Matt didn't...Matt had never...

“Jesus,” was all Foggy said, and he gestured vaguely at the hospital hallway visible through the door to his room, not that Matt could see it. “Are you sure you shouldn't be in one of these beds?”

“This is the oncology ward, Foggy,” Matt said dryly.

Foggy huffed a laugh. Back to familiar territory. That was fine. Better.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Foggy said.

“I'm fine,” Matt said.

“You're not fine,” Foggy said.

The corner Matt's mouth twitched. “I'll probably stop peeing blood in a day or two. That should count for something.”

Foggy scowled.

He had always hated seeing Matt hurt, and how blase he was about injuries that would bench most people for months. It was bound to catch up with him someday, whether or not Foggy lived to see it.

But today, more than that, he hated that Matt had been beaten to within an inch of his life but it was still Foggy in a hospital bed miserable and hurting too weak to move or even to acknowledge what had maybe, almost happened.

“You're not fine!” Foggy snapped again, startling himself with the intensity of it. “None of this is fine!”

Matt's breath hitched, and his hand tightened around his forearm again. For a second, Foggy caught a flash of the old Matt, angry, helpless, reckless, lost. But it was gone as soon as it had come, pressed back behind a hollow smile. “I've had worse. Please don't worry about me. Just…worry about you.”

Silence fell between them. Foggy plucked at the blanket covering his legs, and wanted to throw up. Matt had bowed his head, but Foggy could see his thumb moving nervously over the towel on his arm.

Foggy said, “I want to know how you do it.”

“Do what?” Matt's brow furrowed slightly, like he wasn't sure how to follow the change in subject or tone. “I already told you. You're as fearless as they come.”

“Not that,” Foggy said impatiently, and gestured vaguely at Matt, at the towel and the bruises and the way he was perched so gingerly in the chair. “You're in pain, all the time, aren't you? You go out every night and never wait for anything to heal right. You must be.”

Matt looked surprised, embarrassed, like Foggy had just broached some deeply taboo topic. Foggy supposed, outside of Matt's occasional life-threatening injuries, it usually was. “Some days are better than others,” Matt allowed. “Meditation helps.”

“Have you had time to meditate?” Foggy asked, his frown deepening as he tried to puzzle through the timeline of the last several hours.

“No,” Matt grimaced. “Haven't had much time for anything lately. It's all right. There’s also something to be said for the good old-fashioned Catholic suck-it-up approach.”

As light as Matt’s tone was, Foggy felt a stab of guilt at the words and at his outburst. It was because of his illness Matt was running around like crazy, burning candles at too many ends. Not taking care of himself or even what usually passed for it.

“I want to know how you do it,” was all Foggy said. “If you can't teach me how not to be scared, teach me how to feel like crap and still be okay.” He fidgeted with the blanket again. “I might not have much time left. I don't want to spend it...like this.”

After a moment of surprise, Matt's face relaxed into an expression somewhere between understanding and sympathy.  

Foggy wasn't so sure how he felt about that.

"It might be too late for the Catholicism,” Matt said, his lips curling into an almost-smile. “But I can show you how to meditate, if you want.”

“I’d like that,” Foggy said.

“Really?” Matt said. “You've never been interested before…”

“I didn't have cancer before,” Foggy said.

Matt flinched, and Foggy was starting to get a good idea of what Matt had always complained about, people being weird about the blind thing. “Right.”

Foggy waved his concern away. “It would be good for you too, wouldn't it?”

“Yeah,” Matt admitted, his grip tightening on his arm again. “Probably would.”

A few minutes later, they were both sitting cross-legged on the narrow hospital bed. This endeavor had involved a lot of scooting and adjusting and piling pillows on a ledge beside the bed, all while trying to keep his IV from getting tangled in everything. All that had left Foggy exhausted and aching and sick. At least he hadn’t thrown up again.

Matt was characteristically stoic as he settled onto the mattress cross-legged, though--given the injuries he'd listed--he had to be hurting too. Once his arm had stopped bleeding through its homemade stitches (and boy did they look homemade), Matt had snagged a bandage from a drawer and rewrapped it, then changed into one of Foggy’s long-sleeved T-shirts, which was too big on him but not covered in blood like Matt's button-down. It wasn’t the first time Matt had ever had to borrow Foggy’s clothes, but seeing him in the familiar shirt, with the faded Columbia Law logo splashed across the front, made something twist inside of him.

“I usually sit like this,” Matt said, resting his arms on his knees, his palms turned upward and his thumb and ring fingers pressed together. On the narrow bed, Foggy’s bare knee pressed lightly against Matt's pants leg. Matt had offered to show him from the floor, but Foggy had insisted there was room. After the...whatever it was… Foggy hadn’t been able to admit that he just didn’t want Matt that far away. Matt hadn't put up a fight.

Foggy put his hands on his knees, palms upward, eyeing Matt's fingers as he tried to replicate the pose. “Like this?”

Matt smiled. “It doesn't have to be exact. Whatever's comfortable.”

And for the next hour, Foggy sat beside Matt and tried to clear his mind of everything.

He wasn't very good at it. He had too many fears, too many worries, and he'd always had an overactive mind, needing to make sense of everything and have a contingency plan for everything, especially when Matt was involved.

So he sat there with his eyes closed, and breathed, and wished his stomach would stop churning, and finally found some kind of peace focusing on on the soft rise and fall of Matt's breaths and the gentle pressure of his leg pressed against Matt's.

Matt was there, and that was something. Matt, who could be the world’s worst self-centered jerk with a big superhero soap opera of a life, was spending every free minute in a hard plastic chair watching shitty TV and letting the constant noises and smells of the hospital assail his senses just because it made Foggy feel better. And inevitably, it had all become about Matt as that big superhero soap opera of life of his had reared his head, but...Matt was trying. And that was really something.

In, out. In, out. In, out. 

Slowly, Foggy moved his hand across his knee to Matt’s, where he found Matt’s hand with his own and wrapped his fingers around it. Matt’s strong fingers twitched under Foggy’s, and he almost felt rather than heard Matt’s breath hitch.

Then Matt’s fingers wrapped around his and squeezed, his thumb running lightly over Foggy’s knuckles.

Matt kept breathing.

Foggy smiled, and breathed in and out, and finally, felt himself relax.

They were interrupted, as was life in a hospital, by a nurse tech coming in to change his IV bag and check his vitals, who was more than a little surprised to see Matt and Foggy sitting next to each other on the bed with their hands clasped. The tech stuttered an, “Excuse me, I hope I'm not interrupting anything,” and that was that.

Foggy let go first (thank you, Matt), but it was Matt who smiled at the nurse tech and said, “Not at all. He's all yours.” Then he hopped off the bed, made a show of feeling for the chair, and sat down.

When the nurse left, Foggy had a new cocktail of chemicals coursing through his veins, and Matt looked contemplative, his chin resting in the hand of his uninjured arm, elbow braced on the arm of the chair.

“Better?” Foggy said.

Matt sat upright, dropping his hand. His brow knitted. “Hmm?”

“You said you hadn't had time to meditate,” Foggy said. “So did it help?”

Matt pressed his lips together, suspicion coming over his features. “Yes, but.” His hand grazed over the bandage on his left forearm, a minute wince tightening his handsome features. “It wasn't...it wasn't supposed to be about me. Do you feel any better?”

Foggy took stock. He still felt sick to his stomach, and thirsty now, and his joints ached and so did his head and on top of it sitting in the same cross-legged position for an hour had left his back stiff and his limbs heavy like he'd just run a marathon. He still wanted to sleep for a week. He supposed it shouldn't come as a surprise that one meditation attempt in which he had not successfully cleared his head for more than maybe ten seconds at time had done little to assuage the aches and pains that came with dousing yourself in radiation and an endless chemical bath.

But it was easy enough to recall the feel of his knee against Matt's leg, and the warmth of Matt's strong hand in his, and the calm rise and fall of his breath.

“Yes,” Foggy said truthfully. “I feel better.”

This time, when Matt reached out tentatively for his hand, Foggy let him take it.

Matt swallowed. His thumb ran lightly along Foggy's knuckles. “I don't know what I would do without you. I really don't.”

Foggy gazed down at their clasped hands, then at Matt's face, and back at his own reflection in Matt's shades. In the hour and change since he'd arrived, the bruises on Matt's face had darkened, and they stood out starkly against his pale skin.

He squeezed Matt's hand tighter. “I don't know what I'd do without you either.”

And then something in Matt's face was crumpling, and his free hand was sliding up to the back of Foggy's neck to cup it gently as he leaned in, closed the distance, and pressed his lips to Foggy's. Matt's kiss was warm and soft and stubbly and tasted just a little bit like blood.

Foggy was almost too surprised to return it, and then he did, and then it was over and Matt was pulling away, easing back into the chair by the bed. This time, he didn’t end up on the floor, or let go of Foggy’s hand, and his thumb returned to its gentle caress of Foggy’s skin.

“Matt,” Foggy said. “I thought, I…”

“You should get some rest,” Matt said, rising from the chair, and letting go of Foggy’s hand with a final, gentle squeeze. And if this wasn’t Matt at his melodramatic best, the unexpected kiss followed by the big exit, Foggy didn’t know what was. Still. As he gazed up at Matt, and the little smile just barely tilting the corner of Matt’s lips, Foggy had to admit it pretty much worked.

“And you?” he said, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “You gonna get some rest too?”

Matt’s arm encircled his ribs, and the familiar lines of pain returned for a moment. “Something like that.”

“Promise me, Matt,” Foggy said earnestly. “You'll take care of yourself.”

“Okay,” Matt said finally. “I’ll get some sleep. And I'll be back before work.”

“Great,” Foggy sighed. Exhaustion was dragging him down again. He'd probably fall asleep within a minute of closing his eyes, the nausea and pain and the incessant beeping and paging of the hospital aside. “I'll see you soon.”

Tired as he was, Foggy watched the door long after he'd gone.

There would be another crisis. Matt's big, dramatic superhero soap opera problems would arise again and overwhelm everything in their path, because they always did, and Matt would be selfish and pigheaded and infuriating again, because he always was. And the question of whether Foggy would beat this thing would loom over them, possibly for a long time even after they knew the answer.

But for the first time in a while, Foggy felt like everything could be okay. He’d wanted a way to get through the day and, in a roundabout way, he’d found it. And for the first time in a while, he wasn't so afraid.

He closed his eyes, and he slept.

* * *

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The cane beat the sidewalk in a familiar rhythm. The streets were bustling, dinner hour traffic, and Matt had thought about leaving the cane behind and blending in with the crowds. After his adrenaline-fueled race through the streets this afternoon, though, it would be just his luck someone would recognize his face and the cell phone camera would come out and the New York Bar would be out two lawyers and Foggy would be out one excellent health insurance package. So he tapped, letting the crowd part itself in front of him. The air was awash in the sounds and scents of people enjoying a warm summer evening, but he barely registered any of it.

He walked slowly up the steps to his apartment, unlocked the door, opened it, walked in, and shut it behind him. Discrete steps.

Inside, his apartment was still a mess, bloody costume and first aid supplies strewn about haphazardly, the copper taste of blood lingering in the air. He started picking up the debris, each movement deliberate. The bone-deep cut in his arm throbbed. Fractures in four of his ribs ground against each other with every shift of his weight. He hadn't lied, the meditation had helped and he was grateful Foggy had given him the chance to do it, but split skin and shattered bone and bruised muscle could only heal so fast.

It didn’t matter.

Matt had heard heart Foggy’s heart racing and felt the heat off his cheeks and understood in an instant that Foggy wanted the same things Matt had kept buried for years. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

He knelt on on the bathroom floor and scrubbed at the blood on the tiles, and when he was done he pulled off his boots and pants and collapsed into his bed. He kept Foggy's shirt on. The familar scent of it filled his nostrils and he curled into himself, pulling the covers around his shoulders and burying his face in the pillow.

He had told Foggy the truth back in the hospital when he’d said that Ikari had scared him, and that it had been because he knew he couldn't leave Foggy alone to deal with this thing. It was over with Ikari and Bullseye, for now, but there would be another villain. Another fight. And now, with the memory of Foggy's lips against his...Matt was truly afraid.

He closed his eyes, and he slept.


End file.
